


whiskey business

by elanev91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: """artisanal""" liquor, F/M, M/M, and lily does get drunk rather than dealing with her emotions re: her sister at the end so heads up, and swearing, grad student!sirius, honestly just nonsense, teacher!james
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28731957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanev91/pseuds/elanev91
Summary: Sirius Black has a (bad?) habit of picking up hobbies that take over his and James' flat -- this most recent one? Homemade vodka that James now has to try and peddle to everyone in the building.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 50
Kudos: 179
Collections: James and Lily Fanfics





	whiskey business

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I know this isn’t a story about whiskey, but the pun was too good to ignore.
> 
> Also I really struggled writing this for some reason and I KNOW it isn’t my best work but wow I really just needed to get it out of my head and it was supposed to be done before, at the very least, New Year, but we see how that ended up don’t we. Enjoy anyway??? xx

There were a lot of things about living with Sirius Black that James Potter found…. Interesting.

It was a vague word, he’d be the first to admit, but it was the most accurate word all the same. Nothing with Sirius was ever consistent enough to warrant anything else. 

And James could say that with authority because he was something of an expert where Sirius Black was concerned. Ten years of friendship did that for you, made it so that you had something of a roadmap of even your wildest, most mentally inconsistent friends. Roadmap or not, though, that didn’t mean that he was always prepared for some of the things Sirius managed to get himself into. 

Or, for the sake of accuracy, the things Sirius managed to get _them_ into.

This particular thing started innocently (if not still weirdly) enough — James had been out at Tesco’s doing their weekly shop when Sirius texted him: _can you… get a few bags of potatoes????_

It wasn’t _that_ shocking of a text — Sirius could put away some potatoes, a skill he’d learnt spending his teenage years rebelling against his mother’s “NO STARCHES!” way of life — but it was the “few bags” that really had James raising his eyebrows.

_James: ……. What do you mean “””a few bags”””_

_Sirius: literally what I said_

_James: ok but like WHY DO YOU NEED THA TMANY POTATOES_

_Sirius: don’t worry about it_

_James: SIRIUS_

_Sirius: 9kg bags pls_

_Sirius: 2. Or 3_

_Sirius: and sugar!!!!_

_Sirius: OH AND YEAST_

_Sirius: YEAST, YEAST, YEAST_

_James: I FUCKING HEARD YOU_

_Sirius: wow_

_Sirius: no need to yell_

He’d had to buy an extra reusable bag — one, thank god, with extra thick straps because these potatoes were probably going to bust through anything else — and he’d been planning on walking home, but he was barely out of the store and he was already buckling under the weight of all the food he was now trying to lug up the pavement. 

So onto the bus it was.

A woman glared daggers at him for having the audacity to take up two seats with his bags and, look, normally he would have agreed with the sentiment, but a) he couldn’t control how much space he was taking up here and b) it wasn’t even peak hour, so honestly, she needed to relax.

By the time James was walking back into his building, his arms laden with bags (which was fine, really, because he was convinced it was the only reason he’d managed to retain any sort of muscle mass since graduating uni and, thus, leaving behind his association football glory days) he was at the point where he was very much considering just crawling up the stairs or abandoning half the bags (read: the potatoes) on the ground floor and forcing Sirius to go fetch them. He’d deserve it for adding them onto James’ list.

He knew himself well enough to know, though, that he was going to do no such thing. 

He dragged himself slowly up the stairs to the top floor, the tins of beans he’d bought (the tins he would never tell his mother about because, look, he loved her, but he didn’t have time to start soaking dried beans) clanging aggressively against his ribs. He finally set the potatoes down at the top of the stairs and he turned his foot so that he could shuffle along down the corridor, dragging the potatoes with him.

James pushed his way into the apartment, the cans clanging against the door frame and his body in a way that told James he was going to be dotted with a set of very delightful bruises later, and shouted, ‘Hey,’ as he shut the door. 

Sirius sat up, his head popping up over the back of the sofa. He had his hair tied back, so James could see that he had his AirPods in. ‘Hey.’

‘Get anything accomplished while I was gone?’ 

Sirius popped one of his AirPods out before he turned, struggling a little because he’d had one of his legs thrown over the back of the sofa, and sat up. ‘I’ve been zoned out for the last hour on the theta constant. Does that count?’

James lifted his bags and set them down, tins still fucking clanging, onto the counter. ‘I can’t even begin to tell you one way or the other.’

Sirius hopped to his feet and stretched, his arms up over his head as he tipped back into a slight back bend. He sighed, contented, as he straightened and flashed James his patented, award winning (like actually award winning, because he’d somehow been on some list Buzzfeed had done the year before last) smile. ‘Let’s say it counts then.’

James reached into the nearest bag and started unloading things onto the worktop. ‘Will your thesis advisor agree with that assessment?’

Sirius scoffed. ‘Don’t bring Al into this.’

‘I’ll stop bringing Al into this when you stop complaining about how he’s _stifling_ you.’ James waved bunny fingers around two tins of cannellinis. 

Sirius spun around to meet James’ gaze, hands immediately dropping down onto his hips and lip curled in offence. ‘He is stifling me.’ 

‘Again, I don’t think him asking you to finish your thesis qualifies as stifling.’

Sirius groaned and flopped back onto the sofa. ‘I hate you. I’m moving out.’

James snorted. ‘Good luck finding another flat.’

James idly wondered if this would be one of those times that Sirius did, indeed, find a better flat (not terribly difficult given the state of their flat) and started texting him pictures at random intervals over the next few days as though James would, one day, honestly believe that Sirius was going to take the initiative to actually move out on his own.

‘I got your potatoes, by the way,’ James said. He pushed the bag with the potatoes in (still on the floor) out from behind the kitchen wall so Sirius could see them. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing with them, but you better not waste them. I nearly broke my back getting them up the stairs.’

Sirius practically leapt over the back of the sofa. 

‘Fuck yes, thank you.’ 

James expected him to run into the kitchen, but Sirius, instead, darted down the hall to his bedroom. James was halfway to frowning and shaking his head in confusion when Sirius re-emerged, this time, dragging two large white plastic buckets out into the living room.

‘What the fuck are those?’

‘Fermentation buckets.’ Sirius said it like it was the most normal thing in the world and, truth be told, it took James’ brain a minute to process it and really, you know, _realise_ that it was weird as hell for Sirius to have had fermentation buckets in his bedroom.

‘Where the fuck did you get those? What are you doing?’

‘Amazon.’ Sirius set the buckets on the floor outside the kitchen, the hollow plastic reverberating against the old hardwood. ‘Making vodka.’

‘You gave Jeff more of your money so you could make _vodka?_ ’

‘Don’t get high and mighty on me, Potter,’ Sirius said, rolling his eyes. He grabbed the potatoes off the ground, grunting under the weight, and nudged James out of the way of the worktop with his elbow. ‘I know for a fact you sent mum and dad their gifts off Amazon this year.’

James huffed and grabbed the tins, turning in the small space so that he could start putting them away in the opposite cupboard. 

‘It was the only place that had a decent price.’

‘Fine,’ Sirius said. He flashed James a grin. ‘And I didn’t feel like hauling these massive buckets on the tube home from that brewers supply.’ He pointed vaguely off in the distance, as though James knew exactly which place he was referring to.

James decided not to mention the fact that he had had to drag home the rest of Sirius’ supplies on the bus.

‘And… why are you making vodka?’

Sirius shrugged, opened up the first bag of potatoes, and dumped them unceremoniously into the sink. 

‘Something to do.’

James snorted. ‘Your thesis isn’t enough?’

Sirius held his fingers up at him. ‘Al can bite me. He’ll get my chapter when I’m good and ready.’

James pressed his lips together. ‘Do you have the slightest idea what you’re doing?’

Sirius grabbed the vegetable brush from the drawer (a gift, naturally, from James’ mum who assumed that they ate far more fresh vegetables than they actually did) and began scrubbing off the dirt. 

‘I think so.’

‘Great.’ James put away the last few things and started gathering up the reusable bags, stuffing them one inside the other before rolling them up tight. ‘Well, hopefully we don’t all die of, like, mould poisoning.’

Sirius shot him a look. ‘It’s alcohol, you prat. I don’t think mould can grow in alcohol.’

Despite the fact that he was, okay, _mildly_ curious about this latest venture of Sirius’, rather than stand there and watch Sirius scrub and chop potatoes for however long it took to scrub and chop nine kilos of potatoes, James dragged himself off into his bedroom so that he could finish marking his students’ papers from the week before.

Or, alright, the week before last.

He was a good teacher, but he was not good at marking, okay? Marks were a construct.

He was about halfway through Khadijah’s project — she’d made a whole _podcast_ about the Wilde play they’d been reading that month and he literally couldn’t believe how talented all his students were — when he heard Sirius shout his name loudly from the kitchen.

‘James! Come here, quick, run!’

James had lived with Sirius long enough to know that he did not actually have to run, but, still, he sighed and drug himself up out of his desk chair all the same.

‘This better be good, Sirius, I’m busy.’

‘Too busy for your brother? Your best mate?’

Even from across the flat, James knew Sirius would be making puppy dog eyes in his direction and, sure enough, when he rounded the corner, there they were in full force.

James laughed and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Fuck off. What do you want?’

‘Help me pour this.’

 _This_ was a giant pot full of what James assumed was boiled potato.

A giant pot that, coincidentally, James had literally never seen before in his life.

‘Where the hell did you get that pot?’

Sirius hesitated for a moment before he looked down and attempted to shift the pot off the hob again. ‘Bezos.’

The pot moved about an inch and James immediately stepped forward, hand outstretched. ‘Here, let me — I’ll get it.’

And, in that moment, he realised that he had officially become his mum.

Sirius smirked at him, but, still, he stepped to the side, making room for James to grab the handle on the right side of the pot. Together, they lifted the potatoes — they were actually a lot heavier than James had anticipated — and dumped them into the bucket that Sirius had set in the centre of the kitchen floor.

‘There.’ James lifted the pot out of Sirius’ hand and set it in the sink before he turned to look back at the potatoes in the bucket. They were soft — like overboiled by at least ten minutes if you were aiming to eat them — and the potatoes had fallen apart as they’d knocked together on their way into the bucket so there were soft chunks of flesh floating through the liquid. 

He’d probably eaten his body weight in potatoes over the course of his life, but still, there was something about it that turned his stomach a little bit.

‘Okay, well.’ He wrinkled up his nose and stepped past Sirius so he could exit the kitchen. ‘I’m going back to grading, so have fun with all that.’

‘I will.’ Sirius ran his finger over the trackpad on his laptop (the laptop that Sirius had perched precariously on top of the bowl their mum had got them that was supposed to hold fruit), a small bit of potato skin sticking to the metal, and looked back at the directions he was referencing. James was three-quarters of the way to shocked that Sirius was actually following directions when Sirius swore under his breath and looked back up at him, an almost guilty sort of look on his face that had, never once, boded well.

‘We were supposed to strain them first.’

James’ head fell back towards the ceiling and he groaned. ‘Are you fucking serious?’

‘I don’t know if I’d call it fucking when you’re —’

James snorted and held up his hand. ‘Please shut up.’ 

Sirius just grinned and James rolled his eyes. ‘Get the fucking strainer.’

James never did get back to his grading. 

Between managing to strain the potatoes without getting water all over the floor (and flooding the flat downstairs… again…) and then helping Sirius set up the fermenter (for someone with directions, he was really resistant to actually using them), it was well into the evening before James was even able to wander back into the living room and collapse on the couch and even _then_ he was still having an argument with Sirius about sugar.

‘Well, here’s the thing though, there are two schools of thought —’

‘Sirius, I don’t care.’

‘— the purists say that you shouldn’t use any sugar, I guess because it’s like a cheat or something, but apparently sugar increases the yield —’

‘Sirius.’ James sat up just enough that his head was visible over the back of the sofa. ‘What do you _want_ to do?’

Sirius shrugged, though there was the slightest hint of a thoughtful expression around the edges of his features. ‘I want more vodka.’

‘So fucking cheat it with the sugar then.’ James fell back onto the sofa. ‘It’s not like I’m going to grass to, like, Tom, head of housemade liquor.’

Sirius snorted. ‘Do you think he’s called Tom?’

James laughed and, blissfully, he let his eyes fall closed. He still had a stack of projects to get through tonight (he really needed to stop promising his kids their marks by certain dates, this was getting ridiculous), but he needed a few minutes to close his eyes and pretend that the whole of his flat didn’t currently smell like boiled potato. ‘I sort of hope so now.’

James’ life became swiftly and steadily overcome by that massive bucket of potato mash. Sirius had just shoved it up against the wall between the kitchen and the entry — just in the perfect spot to block both the front door and the narrow passage into the kitchen — and, over the next few days, James would have sworn that that fermenter was literally all that he and Sirius talked about.

_WhatsApp Chat with: Sirius Black_

_Sirius: *video of airlock bubbling*_

_Sirius: when the fuck is this shit going to be done_

_James: didn’t you…. Read the directions???_

_Sirius: it said like two weeks_

_James: ….. ok so two weeks_

_Sirius: but like wHEN_

_Sirius: i’M THIRSTY_

_James: have you heard of this fabulous substance_

_James: kind of new so maybe not I now you’re behind the times on these things_

_James: it’s called water two hydrogens an oxygen it’s delicious_

_Sirius: first of all how dare you sit here and act like I”m not on the cutting edge culturally_

_James: second of all????_

_Sirius: that’s it I have nothing else_

The annoying thing was he was actually sort of interested to see what would happen with this thing. As much as he loved Sirius — and, despite what Sirius said in his more dramatic moments, James really did love him — he wasn't one who necessarily kept to these sorts of projects long-term. Sirius had a long line of projects just like this one littered throughout the timeline of the last few years: last winter he’d decided to become a glass blower (partially because he loved making jokes about _blowing_ ), the year before that he’d built a massive (think _The Birth of Venus_ ) canvas and slapped a few strokes of paint on before he’d given up, and — in what James still thought was his longest streak — he’d decided to take up surfing in upper sixth and had even planned on moving to Cornwall rather than going to uni before he realised that he and Cornwall were not exactly a match made in any sort of heaven. 

James still contended that that was more about proving a point to his weird biological family and while James was very firmly in the camp that every single one of those people could go fuck themselves, he was still glad that Sirius hadn’t left him to move to Cornwall.

But so yeah, sue him, James was interested (and, okay, placing bets with himself in his head) about what would happen with this vodka and when Sirius would finally decide to give it up.

He’d thought that it would be in the waiting period between finishing the initial mixture and whenever the thing was finished fermenting — Sirius was never good with waiting and James knew that it was only a matter of time before Sirius’ impatience (both with the waiting and the constant having to skirt around the bucket he’d set in the middle of the walkway) won out and he just snapped and chucked the whole thing out. This time, though, Sirius seemed a little more persistent than usual.

Sirius was no less annoyed — James got texts like literally every day about the state of the airlock — but he was apparently finding other things to distract him while he waited for his experiment to finish doing… whatever it was doing inside that bucket.

‘So I went to the coffee shop today, you know,’ Sirius waved the spoon in his hand (the one that, literally half a second before, had been stirring the pasta he was currently boiling) and flicked water all over the cooker, ‘did some work on my thesis because — well, whatever, I got another shitty email from Al, but that’s not what’s important.’

James set his pen down, his eyebrows shooting up as his gaze found Sirius’ from the other side of the kitchen. James had decided to force himself to stand in the kitchen and finish marking before he made himself dinner in hopes that being near the smell of Sirius’ dinner would encourage him to work faster. ‘You got _another_ email from him? He’s going to drop you as his advisee, Sirius.’

Sirius barked a laugh. ‘No he won’t. I’m the best one in the programme. They’d all be lost without me.’

James laughed and shook his head before he turned back to the paper in his hand. ‘You’re the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met.’

‘And you fucking wish you were me, but _anyway,_ I was telling you a story.’

‘Right, so sorry.’

‘But while I was there, I met — and James, I’m literally not exaggerating —’

James hummed and nodded. ‘You never exaggerate.’

‘— the honest to god most _attractive_ man I have ever seen in my whole twenty-six years.’

James laughed and scribbled a short note at the top of Callum’s essay — _nice work! bring in a little more evidence from your primary sources in your next draft and then look closely over the feedback from your writing group next week._ ‘If I had a quid for every time I heard that —’

‘No, look, okay,’ Sirius was waving his spoon again, pasta water going everywhere. ‘I really mean it this time though.’

He said that every time, too.

‘Did you get his name this time?’

Sirius scoffed and rolled his eyes. ‘I always get names, James, I’m not you.’

James held his fingers up at Sirius as he flipped to the next essay he had to mark. ‘Rude.’ 

Sirius ignored him. ‘Remus is an amateur brewer, apparently, and he gave me some good feedback about, like, what to do with our little vodka bucket.’

‘He’s an _amateur brewer_?’ Something about it just… James was deeply amused by the idea that anyone besides Sirius would just sit around concocting things in their flat for fun.

‘Yeah.’ Another wave of pasta water splashed onto the counter. ‘Apparently he started working at a pub a few years ago and someone there got him into it.’ Sirius very obviously doesn’t care about the details and, really, James doesn’t either.

‘So what thoughts did he have about this bucket of yours then?’

‘He had some suggestions about what to do with distillation and he asked how we were handling the cap at home and, lol, that reminded me that I’m supposed to be doing something about that.’

James laughed under his breath, his eyes falling closed as he shook his head. ‘You’re literally going to poison us, I can feel it.’

Sirius rolled his eyes. ‘He’s going to come over on Friday before he goes to work to take a look.’

James grinned then, his eyes sliding up so that he could catch Sirius’. Sirius’ expression was just as smooth as James had expected based on his incredibly blase tone, but tone and cool posturing aside, James could tell that Sirius was excited about this _Remus_ coming over on Friday afternoon.

It was the very slight upturn to the corners of his lips and the soft punch of his dimple in his left cheek. Subtle, but definitely there if you knew to look for it.

He was barely keeping himself together and, god, look, call James a romantic, but seeing Sirius excited like this about someone again? It was going to do him in.

‘I’m glad you’re finally getting some professional help.’ James looked back down at the essay he was marking, his eyes skimming back to the top of the paragraph he’d been reading because wow he couldn’t remember a single thing that Chiara had said in this paragraph. ‘Maybe now we’ll be able to drink it and survive.’

Between Sirius and Remus (let’s be honest, mostly Remus), Sirius managed to come out of his distillation process (one that James walked in on the middle of and — further proof he’s officially his mother — he’d nearly had a heart attack because there were literally buckets and tubes and funnels _everywhere_ ) with several litres of vodka at a perfect 40%.

‘You should store that out of the direct sunlight,’ Remus said, tilting his head towards the line of clear vodka bottles lined up on the worktop. ‘The sunlight speeds up the oxidation and can ruin it a lot faster.’

Remus had become, more or less, a staple presence around their flat over the last few weeks. He worked nights down the pub, so James mostly saw him in passing when he got home from work. He was around most weekends, though, and between their admittedly limited conversation (Sirius was very much a conversation hog) and the way that Sirius lit up like a fucking mirror ball whenever Remus was around, James had pretty much decided that he liked the guy.

James shook his head, a smile curling up at the corner of his lips. ‘I can’t believe you did all that and only got that much liquor.’ 

Sirius, of course, was immediately indignant. ‘Four is a lot of bottles!’

‘Yeah,’ Remus smirked at him. ‘Four is a lot of bottles, David.’

‘You used nine fucking kilos of potatoes,’ James said, and, fucking hell, Remus did not have the right to make jokes because he was near to laughing now and that would definitely detract from his ability to take the piss out of Sirius. ‘And you only got that much because you added water.’

‘You’re actually supposed to add the water,’ Remus said, but he was immediately overshadowed by Sirius who, now, was borderline shouting.

‘Fine. I’ll make another batch then! See how much vodka we have then.’

It wasn’t at all what James wanted, but, then, it was exactly what James was going to get.

Over the next few weeks, Sirius did, in fact, make more and more vodka. He worked out a system (thanks, almost entirely, to the fact that Remus was something of a genius when it came to setting up reasonable schedules) so that he had a near constant flow of vodka to distill and bottle. James was almost impressed at how efficient he’d become — he’d literally never seen Sirius this organised in his entire life. 

The downside of that organisation, though, was that Sirius was now churning out litres of vodka every week and neither of them had enough friends or room available in their freezer to store it all.

A downside he pointed out two months later when James finally couldn’t take the now four bottle deep line up they had going along the back of their dining table.

James was in one of his _moods_ as Sirius called them — a mood entirely down to the fact that his head of department had strutted into the department meeting that afternoon and just demanded that they all start using a new standard rubric when they were marking critical essays, which, on the face of it, was annoying but fine, though it was his department head’s rubric and his department head couldn’t successfully mark writing if his life depended on it. So, _yes_ , he was in a mood, and whenever he was in a mood, sue him, he sometimes just finally snapped over the things that had been quietly bothering him for the last few weeks.

Like the fact that they could barely move in their flat without hitting a vodka bottle these days.

 _‘And_ this whole house smells like a fucking distillerary, Sirius.’ 

‘There are worse things that it could smell like.’ Sirius didn’t even look up from the salad he was currently chopping for himself. ‘Like your uni house, for instance.’

‘I seem to recall you lived in that house, too, you prat.’

‘Yeah,’ Sirius gestured a little too cavalierly with the chef’s knife in his hand. ‘But it wasn’t _my_ room that stank like sweat and mud.’

As much as he wanted to argue with him, he knew that Sirius was right. He’d not been the best about putting his kit away (or, you know, banging his boots out on the front step) and so, fine, his room did chronically have an _earthy_ undertone.

‘My point still stands.’ James stabbed a bit of cauliflower — he’d gotten cauliflower curry from this takeaway down the road in an attempt to ward off the mood he definitely hadn’t warded off — and stuffed it into his mouth. ‘We have to get rid of all this, it's getting ridiculous.’

‘Well, Remus says we can’t sell it because we don’t have a licence.’ Sirius said this in the sort of tone he always used when he was rolling his eyes, and though, sure, it wouldn’t have been the first law the two of them had broken together, James was more or less past his law breaking days.

With the exception of illegally streaming things (and, alright, he’d also downloaded the Sims and all the expansion packs the last time they’d released a new expansion pack), but he was pretty sure that that didn’t count.

‘I don’t care if we give it away,’ James said. It was stupid, knowing how much money Sirius was spending on potatoes to just be giving the product away, but if they couldn’t sell it (and he and Sirius couldn’t drink all of it without immediately putting themselves into comas) he really didn’t see what other choice they had.

‘You want to just give away my hard earned vodka?’ If Sirius could put his hands on his hips he would’ve. ‘The vodka I stirred and nurtured and bottled and —’

‘Save it.’ James held up his hand, his fork slotted between his fingers. ‘We can’t possibly drink it all. We’d literally die if we tried.’

‘Well, you know I always loved a challenge.’

James rolled his eyes. ‘This is different to, like, trying to spit a marshmallow into Walburga’s hair without her noticing —’

Sirius pointed the knife at him again. ‘I think that was a little more dangerous than some vodka.’

James snorted. ‘Fair enough.’

‘I guess you have a point, though,’ Sirius said, swirling the knife in his hand again before he (finally) set it down. ‘Like, I could certainly make an effort to drink all this, but —’

‘No, yes, thank you.’ James flipped open the stack of folders beside him and grabbed out a handful of clean sheets of printer paper from the back. ‘Let’s get rid of this shit.’

And, after practically throwing the Sharpie cap across the room in his haste, James scribbled the following message across each of the five sheets of paper — 

_This sounds sketchy, but it’s not, I swear. If you want some free vodka, come to 3B, we have… too much. Just knock :)_

* * *

Despite the very flagrant sketchiness of their note, they got a surprising amount of action on it in that first week. Though, if James was honest, “a surprising amount of action” really just meant “two neighbours knocked and shyly asked for a bottle each” and that was definitely not enough to get the vodka flowing out of their flat.

Remus and James were both able to get rid of a few bottles at work — though Callum, one of James’ Year Elevens, saw him hand off a bottle to Trelawny, one of the art teachers, and had started a rumour that _Mr Potter is running a ring or something, like Peaky Blinders, I’d bet anything_ — and Sirius had been able to unload several onto some of the people on his course, but even with all that, they still had so many bottles of vodka knocking around the flat that James had half a mind to start googling _things you can do with leftover vodka_ because he was pretty positive that the internet had more than few hack articles on the subject.

Before he went completely mad, though, and started buying a whole Tescos worth of tinned tomatoes to make vodka sauce, he printed up their little note in a nice font on some coloured paper and stuck it in a few more places in their building in hopes that they might, finally, get the dozen or so other people who lived in this building to finally take this booze off their hands.

A few days later, James finally got… well, not his wish, but he got _engagement_ , which was at least something close to.

As was, more or less, his customary Thursday behaviour, he struggled through the door at half seven, his arms completely overladen with shopping (though, thankfully, these were just his groceries and not some random things (beyond, okay, a Cadbury bar) that he’d had to grab for Sirius). He was three quarters of the way to the stairs when he glanced over and spotted a bright pink post-it note on the little advertisement James had stuck up overtop the post-boxes. 

He shifted his bag back up onto his shoulder and reached out to grab the note. He had a little difficulty reading it through the fog on his glasses — the shock of the heating against his glasses after the bitter cold outside never ceased to delight him — but he managed to make it out.

_Pretty sure you’re not supposed to be advertising alcohol without an alcohol licence - 2B_

James stared down at the words, reading them again before he laughed a little to himself and slipped the note into one of the bags on his shoulder. 

He couldn’t tell if 2B was being serious — something about it rang with sarcasm, but then, James didn’t know 2B, not since Gavin had moved out a few months back (and Gavin would absolutely have meant that note completely seriously, might even have called the council on them and grassed because he was _just_ that fucking terrible). James wasn’t in the habit of meeting his neighbours, to be honest (another thing his mother was frustrated with him about because she insisted that there was no way he could be properly living anywhere if he wasn’t getting together with the people he happened to live beside), but he hadn’t even _seen_ the new residents in 2B. Sirius had seen them when they’d moved in (Sirius saw everyone move in because he was always staring through the peephole or making unnecessary trips downstairs to “see if any of them are hot”), but Sirius had failed (per usual) to entice James off the sofa that day to partake in one of his weirder habits.

Sirius insisted it was “his civic duty” to “scope out their neighbours” because “mum will never forgive me if I let you get killed by a crazy neighbour, James”, but Sirius also spent too much time saying things like, ‘Oh my god, the new guy in 3A literally looks like the Rock, I want to lick honey off him’ for James to believe that it had anything to do with civic duty.

Also Sirius had lied his way out of jury service both times he’d been called, so, really, Sirius cared fuck all about civic duty.

So James didn’t have the slightest idea who now occupied 2B, but he also — and he really racked his brain as he climbed the stairs — couldn’t remember anything that Sirius had said about them when they’d moved in. 

Which was weird because Sirius almost always said something mildly scarring that stuck with James forever. Which, if he was honest, was probably why he wasn’t friends with any of his neighbours.

It was hard enough looking Chad in 1B in the eye because he was literally the most ridiculous human being alive, but it was even harder when he remembered the things Sirius had said about him when he’d moved in. 

Even now, vaguely remembering it all, James felt an urge to just roll backward down the stairs. End it all.

‘Hey.’ James pushed his way through the door, bags clanging against his ribs like always. ‘We got a note from 2B on our advert downstairs.’

Sirius poked his head up from over the back of the couch. ‘Did we?’

‘Mhmm.’ James set his bags heavily onto the worktop and sighed with relief as his shoulders finally relaxed. ‘Very cheeky about how we’ve not got a licence.’

James couldn’t see clearly from the kitchen, but he would have staked his life on the fact that Sirius had just rolled his eyes from the tone of his voice alone. ‘Some people are just so nosy.’

‘I don’t think it counts as nosy if we’ve literally got adverts all over the building.’

Sirius waved his hand dismissively. ‘Whatever, it counts.’

Despite the fact that he was sure, in some small, secret part of his brain, that there was something to Sirius’ assertion that the note was just from some building busy body, James couldn’t help but think about it over the next few days as he walked down the stairs, past flat 2B just opposite the landing. 

Part of him had half a mind to knock — to say _I saw your response on our posting downstairs, very funny unless you were serious in which case it’s literally just free booze can you chill_ — but it was only, he knew, because it was driving him a little mental that he didn’t have the slightest idea who had left them the note in the first place. 

For all the build up in his mind about it, he ended up running into them in what, in retrospect, James knew was the most anticlimactic way possible.

But in retrospect only because, quite honestly, in the moment, he felt like he’d been knocked back onto his arse.

Late Monday evening, about a week after _The Note_ , he was running — like genuinely dead sprinting, could’ve (in his mind) given Usain Bolt a run for his money — from the bus stop down the road to his flat, praying to, well, deities he didn’t believe in, that his bag wasn’t soaked through and that his laptop and school papers were still safely cocooned inside. He had his leather bag half tucked up underneath his arm, half pressed hard against his chest (as though proximity to his body was somehow correlated with water-resistance) and he knew that his bag was _somewhat_ waterproof, but he also knew that he’d brought home more than his fair share of soggy student papers in far lesser rains that this one.

He’d been sitting on the bus home when the sky opened up — it had been grey all day, a darker, more ominous colour than usual, and so he’d known it had been coming. He’d expected a light sprinkling at first, though, the soft dots of water on the bus windows (or, if he’d been lucky, on the pavement as he walked home) just hinting at the torrent on the horizon, but no. 

There he was, top deck, three rows from the front, and the sky was dumping so much water on the ground James would honestly have believed you if you told him someone had just turned a pressure washer onto the whole of east London. 

He wasn’t a stranger to this, running flat out to his building like his shoes were on fire, but every time still felt a little bit like the first time, the shock at being caught in the rain in the first place (or the sense of dread building in your gut when you could see that you were about to be dumped out into the rain), the rush of air through your lungs as you were running down the pavement, the thrill of the energy in your muscles and the chill of rainwater against your skin….

He hated having his things ruined, but, in reality, James never really minded getting caught up in the rain.

He slowed his pace just enough that he could turn onto his front step without his feet sliding out from under him (he’d learnt that lesson the hard way) and, after bounding up the front steps and more or less stabbing his key into the lock, he barrelled through the door. The first thing he noticed was the wave of heat smacking him in the face, his feet sliding a little on the black and white tile entry as his drenched and (now, he realised) freezing body came up against the power of the radiator in the entryway that never could quit.

The second thing was the person he then immediately walked into.

‘Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.’ James dropped his bag from his hands and they flitted, for a moment, forward, like he was going to reach out and steady the person he’d just basically body slammed, before he thought better of it. 

‘I wasn’t watching where I was going, clearly,’ he laughed a little, the sound awkward, like his usual laugh scraping over glass, ‘and I’m so sorry.’

They were maybe a head shorter than him, this person he’d nearly catapulted into the post boxes, and they had long, dark red hair spilling down their back. The colour clashed viciously with the electric pink mac they were wearing, but there was something about it that made James smile (or want to smile had he literally not just attempted to send this person into the stratosphere).

And the way their hair curled, just a little bit, at the ends…

‘It’s no problem.’ Pink mac turned to face him and the laugh in her voice was nothing, _nothing_ to the smile on her face, all teeth, warm cheeks, shining emerald green eyes.

And freckles. Bright green eyes and freckles and the most gorgeous red hair and holy _hell_ , a gut punch.

‘Okay.’ His voice was halfway between an exhale and a laugh. ‘I’m glad I didn’t knock you over.’

Pink mac laughed again. ‘You weren’t going to knock me over.’

‘I was going pretty fast. And I’m pretty big.’ He heard it as the words were coming out of his mouth, but beyond praying for a hole to open up underneath his feet, there was nothing he could do. 

Her lips twitched, and, hell, if her eyes were bright before, they positively _shone_ now. ‘Not happening.’ She reached down with one hand and patted her thigh, the sound of her mac underneath her palm loud and crinkly in the silence. ‘I played rugby for like fifteen years. Nothing knocks me down.’

‘Holy shit.’ Between her slender frame and the fact that she looked like a rainbow had exploded on her, that was literally the last thing he ever would have expected her to say. He was a little flummoxed now honestly. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t fall over, then, when I walked into you.’

She laughed, her head falling back a little this time and fucking hell, James knew he was pathetic (he could hear Sirius’ voice in the back of his head that very moment in fact), but this felt like it was a whole different sort of level.

‘I’m surprised, too,’ she said. ‘You looked like a fawn stumbling through the door just now.’

James did his best to frown at her, but her grin must be infectious because James couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Only because of the rain.’

She snorted and turned her back on him again so that she could step forward towards the post boxes. ‘Sure.’

She rummaged around in her bag for a beat before she reached forward and opened the postbox for 2B. She was just about to grab the post out when James made literally the most unattractive noise imaginable and she whirled around to face him.

‘Are you okay?’

‘You’re in 2B.’

She was staring at him like he had three heads. ‘Yes?’

‘You —’ He laughed a little and reached up to slid his hand through his hair. His palm was still damp from the rain and, judging by the way that he didn’t immediately feel his hair flop back down onto his forehead, he was betting he was now sporting quite the look. ‘I got your note the other day.’

She stared at him, confused for a moment before recognition dawned across her features. ‘ _You’re_ vodka guy?’

‘Well, no, that’s my brother, but —’

‘Okay, so you’re vodka guy affiliated.’

‘Yeah, you could say that.’

She laughed, louder this time, and James was _sure_ that the posh twat he and Sirius had dubbed Nigel in 1A was just sliding his shoes on, ready for the confrontation. ‘I can’t believe that _you’re_ peddling free vodka throughout the building.’

‘I can’t believe _you_ teased me about not having an alcohol licence.’

She arched an eyebrow at him, her expression perfectly smooth and, horribly, devoid of all remaining traces of humour. ‘Who said I was teasing?’

James just stared at her, the beginnings of _fucking hell we’re fucked_ level of terror starting to swirl in his gut, and he knew that he could be charming — cocky, yes, but he’d charmed his way out of many, _many_ issues in the past — but somehow he didn’t think that pink mac was the type to —

Her features lightened as her lips stretched into a smile, and James felt his heart drop back down out of his throat.

‘Your face!’ She laughed again and shook her head, and James did his very best to scowl at her.

‘You’re awful.’

He stepped forward, side stepping her a little so that he could grab his own post. His hands were now — thanks to time and his foolish decision to run his hand through his hair a moment ago — thankfully dry, so all the junk in his post box could be safely transported up to the recycling bin in his flat.

‘I’d apologise,’ she said, turning a little so that she was still facing him despite the fact that she was more or less speaking to his back, ‘but I’m really not sorry.’

He snorted and, after shutting his post box, turned around again to face her. ‘Sorry or not, I still feel like you could make it up to me. Amends for all the emotional suffering.’

‘Emotional suffering.’ Her tone was completely flat, but there was a brightness in her eyes that told James she was very much playing along.

‘Yes.’ He touched a hand to his heart. ‘It’s been quite the struggle this week, thinking the council was going to send their licencing henchmen after me.’

She laughed again and, bloody hell, James would give almost anything in the world to stand her all night with her making her laugh. ‘Fair enough. What can I do then?’

‘Please take some of this vodka off my hands.’

She hadn’t looked like she’d believed him at first, but, as he explained on his way up the stairs to his god forsaken third floor flat, Sirius and his boyfriend had really gotten out of hand with the vodka making thing.

‘I don’t know if you should call Remus his boyfriend, though, just in case it comes up. Like, they’re totally dating, but Sirius gets weird and tends to shut off if anyone else labels them before he labels them.’

Lily laughed again — yes, her name was Lily, _Lily_ , and James had nearly died when she’d stuck her hand out to shake, big toothy smile on again — but this laugh sounded a little tighter than the last few she'd blessed him with.

‘Good to know.’

They came to a stop outside his door and, per usual, James had to struggle for a few minutes to extract the keys from the bottom of his bag. 

‘I swear,’ he said, frustration clear in his voice because he had one arm clamped tight against his side to keep the post from clattering to the floor and he was using his thigh to angle his bag just so so that he could keep it open so he could continue to rifle through it and he always ended up feeling more like a contortionist than a teacher at this point of the day and he really needed a better system for storing these keys. ‘These get lost every day and it always takes me — aha!’ 

They’d been stuck underneath the book one of his colleagues in English had given him — _The Moonstone_ or something, apparently she thought he’d like it — and he shook them a little in triumph before flipping his keys over and unlocking the door.

‘If it smells like vodka in here,’ James said, looking over his shoulder a little as he pushed open the door, ‘I’m really sorry. But then you’ll have a clearer idea of why exactly I need to get rid of all this and how grateful I am for your help.’

She laughed. ‘I’m just taking one bottle.’

‘Don’t you have a housemate or something?’ He turned as he walked through the door so he could maintain eye contact. ‘Would they drink some lovely artisanal vodka?’

She arched that eyebrow at him again. ‘I thought it was just the remnants of potato slush Sirius had somehow managed to bottle.’

From behind them, James heard a scandalised gasp. Sure enough, Sirius was sitting bolt upright on the sofa, hand on his chest. ‘My vodka is _not_ potato slush, James.’

James was not to be deterred. ‘It literally is.’ He stepped to the side and gestured towards Lily. ‘This is Lily, by the way. She lives in 2B.’

The significance of her flat number did not go unnoticed by Sirius. His smile immediately widened and his gaze flicked, just once, back and forth between James and Lily.

‘You ring the council on us, then?’

Lily took another step into the flat so that both feet had now properly crossed the threshold. ‘I haven’t managed it yet, no. I wanted to see your operation first. Decide if it was worth it.’

Sirius very nearly smiled and that, _that_ , was how James knew she’d gotten him. ‘Have a look around then.’ He dropped back down onto the sofa, turning back to look at the laptop on his lap. They were all quiet for a beat before Sirius added, ‘Please take, like, two bottles at least, because I really can’t deal with James’ whinging anymore.’

James scowled in Sirius’ direction, but he saw Lily turn to smile up at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘You’re whinging?’

‘No.’ 

‘ _Yes_.’ Sirius said, loudly enough that he nearly drowned out James’ response. 

Lily grinned again. ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to take two bottles then. Spare Sirius the suffering.’

James frowned. ‘You were supposed to be sparing _me_ from the vodka.’

‘There you go,’ Lily said, playfully rolling her eyes, ‘whinging again.’

James nudged her lightly with his elbow and pointed, unnecessarily, to the dining table filled with vodka bottles. ‘Take your liquor and get out of here, you monster.’

With Lily (and her housemate, Marlene) now added to the rotation, James and Sirius were finally able to get rid of the vodka at something like a reasonable pace. Lily’s colleagues were apparently a bunch of lushes, because the minute James mentioned that she could take some to them, too (‘or anyone else you know who might like some, seriously, please’) vodka started flying off the dining table.

Sirius had put one more batch in the fermenter in the beginning of December — the sight of the potatoes boiling away on the cooker when he’d gotten home from work that evening had nearly sent James into cardiac arrest — but, with that last batch, his interest in continuing to lug home, chop, and boil potatoes seemed, finally, to be waning. 

‘It’s just a lot,’ Sirius said. He was in the middle of running his last — _last_ — batch of vodka through distillation. Remus was sat next to him on the ground, holding the hose still, while James was sat on the couch running through his students’ group assignments from the week (he’d really hit his stride with grading this year, not to brag, and was now getting them back their assignments only, like, three days after they’d turned them in). 

‘If I literally never see a potato again,’ Sirius continued, ‘it’ll be too soon.’

‘So I guess you don’t want to go to that pop up roastraunt then,’ Remus said. His tone was completely even, almost deadpan, but there was no mistaking the amusement in his eyes. 

Sirius nudged him with his foot. ‘Piss off.’

As happy as James was to see the other side of Sirius’ vodka-making obsession, there was a small part of him that worried (he knew it was a strong word, but if he was really being honest, it was a true one) about what would happen now that he no longer had this excuse to talk to Lily on random evenings. 

Now that he’d seen her once, he felt like he was seeing her all the time, so much so that he found himself wondering how he hadn’t managed to see her before that day he’d practically run her over. She was knocking on his door every few days asking for some bottle for some colleague in some distantly related department to hers (apparently word had gotten around at Curve Metrics), he was seeing her all the time near the post boxes when he got home from work (thankfully, not dripping wet from the rain most of the time). He was seeing her almost constantly, and every single time he got that big, stupid swoop in his gut, that rush of feeling down his arms, the one that pooled in his chest and made it hard to breathe. 

James knew he fell hard, but this, this wanting to know her, wanting to sit and laugh with her, wanting to hear about her day, even the boring ones — this felt like a harder fall than usual.

It was next to impossible to act normally around her — James was sure that she must know, that he must be wearing it right there on his sleeve — but as the weeks flew by and Lily, very steadily, became a “coming in and sitting on the couch to have a catch up” type of friend, it became apparent that Lily didn’t have the slightest idea that James was nursing feelings for her. 

Made worse, of course, by the fact that he was being ridiculous and hadn’t said anything because, according to Sirius, James was, once again, being “too straight to function” and was, once again, letting self-sabotage drive the car on this one.

‘You should just tell her you literally fancy the pants off her,’ Sirius said one night in late December. They were both sitting on the sofa, Sirius “reading” his thesis comments from his advisor, James, as always, marking some essays — Lily had just left a few minutes before, and hour and a half sat on the couch with her, laughing about nothing, had been enough to send James into a very silly spiral again.

In his defence, she’d been wearing that bright blue floral skirt and the emerald cardigan again, and there was something about those pieces that really did a number on him. 

‘Is it weird that I haven’t told her at this point, though?’ James was absently tapping the end of his pen on top of the paper on his lap and though he could see the small purple flecks of ink appearing there, he also couldn’t stop himself doing it. 

Sirius snorted. ‘If it’s weird, then it’s weirder that you keep not telling her.’

James hated it when Sirius was reasonable.

But here was the thing, and this was what he kept telling Sirius, even when he and Lily were sitting together on the couch, just chatting, even when things were cool and light and casual and there was literally no possibility of anyone overhearing him potentially make an arse of himself, the last thing he wanted to do was start stumbling through some explanation of how he thought that, really, she was the brightest, funniest, toughest, most beautiful woman he’d literally ever seen and he would love to take her to dinner.

It always ended up sounding halfway decent when he said it in his head like that, but he knew himself well enough to know that that was not how the words were going to end up coming out of his mouth.

Sirius still made fun of him for the way he’d asked Sadie Ross out in lower sixth.

Which, granted, James deserved because it involved a massive homemade banner, a portable speaker, and David Guetta, but _still_. 

So, fine, James didn’t say anything, and it wasn’t that he was a coward (Sirius), it was that, really, the more he got to know Lily (and he was getting to know her quite well because she was over theirs like, at least once a week now and he’d even been to hers a few times), the more he just….

Really appreciated having her around. 

Really liked getting to know her.

And he didn’t know if it meant anything when she sometimes put her hand on his forearm when she laughed, or if the way she sometimes lingered in the doorway before she left, eyes on his, he didn’t know if that was significant — part of him thought it might be, that it must be, but he couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t matter that Sirius _and_ Remus (even though Sirius had, technically, met Remus first, James still called him a traitor for agreeing with him) kept insisting that James was an idiot for not at least saying something, because he was keen to just… not fuck things up where Lily was concerned.

By the last week of December — James’ favourite week in December because it meant he didn’t have to go into work — James and Sirius had finally managed to get rid of almost every single bottle of vodka they had still floating around the flat. James had given a few away at the work do the week before hols, Sirius had practically flung one at Al to remain (miraculously) in Al’s… well, not good graces, but at least off his shit list, and every single one of their neighbours had popped by to grab a bottle to give away for Christmas, something that, if James was honest, genuinely surprised him.

‘I can’t believe your weird homemade vodka is good enough that people are gifting it.’ James had just shut the door behind their very sweet (and impossibly old) ground floor neighbour, Mrs Abelard — she’d wanted two bottles, one for each of her “ungrateful children”, so actually, now that he was thinking about it, maybe that wasn’t the compliment to Sirius’ liquor-making that James had initially thought it was. 

‘First of all, it isn’t weird.’ Sirius was standing in front of the full length mirror in his bedroom, frowning at his outfit. It was positioned just so so that James could see him from the front door, but, as he migrated further into the lounge and dropped down onto the sofa, James lost sight of him. Not that he couldn’t more than imagine Sirius’ expressions all on his own. ‘Second of all, of course they do, they’ve all had their first taste and now they realise how special it is.’

‘It’s hilarious to me that you talk about your vodka the same way you talk about yourself.’

Sirius snorted. ‘I hate you.’ James heard the sound of heavy boots on old, creaky hardwood, and Sirius appeared around the corner. He gestured down at himself. ‘What do you think?’

He was wearing a pretty standard Sirius outfit — ripped black jeans, beat up Doc Martens, leather jacket — but the jumper underneath said jacket looked new and, honestly, a lot more wholesome than anything James had ever seen Sirius in. It worked, somehow, but the contrast was still a little hilarious to him. 

‘Where —‘

Another knock sounded at the door, and Sirius huffed, clearly frustrated at not having gotten his opinion immediately. 

James just turned to look at Sirius over his shoulder as he walked through the door. ‘Where did you get that jumper?’

‘Remus.’ Sirius tugged a little at the hem. ‘Apparently some little shop in the village he grew up in makes “the _best_ jumpers” and he rang them up and bought me one.’

‘It looks good,’ James said as he stepped forward and opened the door. He was going to tack on a bit more — something that didn’t leave Sirius feeling like it was just some platitude to get him out the door — when he realised it was Lily on the other side of the threshold and his breath fell out of him. 

Her long red hair was done up this evening, an elegant bun sitting at the base of her neck, but there were a few loose tendrils curling around her face, the curls soft enough that James wanted to trace his finger over them, just to feel that they were real. Her eyes were dark — between the mascara and the slightly heavy liner smudged on her lids — but the effect was stunning. Her eyes shone, an impossibility, James would have thought, in the horrible light in the corridor, and the dark emerald green popped against the bright cobalt blue of the dress she was wearing. It didn’t seem to be anything too fancy — not that James knew the slightest bit about what was actually fancy — but he found his gaze tracing over her, his eyes catching on the dips and curves of her body underneath the fabric. 

He cleared his throat and, a little too abruptly to make it look natural, brought his eyes back up to hers. 

‘Wow.’ He was pretty sure he’d just had a kilo of sand dumped into his mouth. ‘You look nice.’

She flashed a smile. ‘Thanks. I have to go to my horrid sister‘s.’ She rolled her eyes before casting her gaze over his shoulder. James realised that, in her heels, they were nearly eye level. ‘Hey Sirius. I like your jumper.’

‘It is nice, isn’t it?’ Sirius said, all signs of his previous uncertainty gone from his tone. 

Lily was smirking when her eyes flicked back to James’ again. ‘Do you happen to have another bottle of vodka lying around? I wanted to take something to Petunia’s party but kept putting it off and now my uber’s going to be here in,’ she lifted her mobile up and glanced down at the screen. ‘Fuck, two minutes, and I’m already kind of pushing it if I want to make the train, so I can’t, like, stop.’

James felt himself smiling at her. ‘I never would have imagined you were the running late sort, Evans.’

Lily rolled her eyes. ‘Piss off, do you have one or not?’

James chuckled. ‘Yeah, we’ve got one.’ He stepped back, holding the door open to indicate that Lily was free to walk through. She took a few steps in, turning her head to peer into the kitchen, but otherwise stayed put. 

It was a far cry from the “barrelling into his flat” Lily that he’d gotten used to over the last few weeks, but, then, he supposed she was on something of a deadline. 

He grabbed the last bottle ( _the last fucking_ (unopened) _bottle_ ) off the top of the fridge before he turned and handed it to her. 

She frowned as he pressed the bottle into her palm. ‘Is that your last one?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s fine. We have one open in the freezer.’

He thought that that would be enough but apparently not. 

Her frown deepened. ‘I can’t take your last bottle.’

‘You can,’ James said, at the same time as Sirius said, ‘Please take it, I’m tired of hearing James cry about them.’

James shot him a look over his shoulder. Sirius’ expression was perfectly even, save the slight arch of his left eyebrow that told James he was feeling particularly haughty at the moment.

‘I’m not crying about them. They were just everywhere.’

‘Whatever.’ Sirius waved his hand dismissively before his gaze slid to Lily. ‘Please take it. Remus and I can always make more.’

If James’ jaw could have hit the floor, it would have. ‘Please don’t make more.’

That only made Sirius’ smile wider and then, _and then_ , even Lily betrayed him.

‘That would be excellent, actually. I’m having a few friends over for my birthday in a few weeks and I’d love to treat them to some of this.’

James gaped at her. ‘I can’t believe you’re out here betraying me right now.’

She laughed, a bright, earth-shattering sound before she started and glanced down at her mobile in her hand. The screen was lit up with a call from an unknown number and she swore. ‘Fuck, I think this is my uber driver. I’ve got to go.’ 

She stepped forward and, hand resting softly on James’ forearm and pressed a swift kiss to his cheek. ‘I’ll see you later, assuming I survive.’ She stepped over and gave Sirius a kiss, too, before she accepted the call and pressed her mobile to her ear. 

‘Hi, yes, I’m waiting in the lobby, are you here?’

And with that blatant lie on her lips, Lily bustled out of the apartment and started clattering down the stairs.

James could’ve moved then, could’ve shut the door, but instead he was just stood there, stock still, his cheek still burning from the press of Lily’s mouth against his skin. He could feel Sirius staring at him — saw Sirius’ smile growing wider out of the corner of his eye — but honestly his brain had shut down and no amount of Sirius teasing him was going to bring him out of it.

‘Alright, well,’ Sirius was still smiling, the absolute bastard, ‘I’ve had my fill of straightness for the evening. I’m going to go meet Remus.’

James swallowed and blinked a few times in a poor attempt to clear his head. ‘Are you staying at his tonight?’

‘Yeah, probably.’ Remus reached up absently and adjusted the ends of his hair, turning them a bit so that the natural curl looked a little bit sleeker. ‘We’ve going to some restaurant near his flat, so I’m assuming that’s the plan.’

‘Look at you.’ James was smiling now, glad, for the moment, to have the upper hand. ‘Having a plan.’

Sirius held his fingers up at him and grabbed his keys out of the bowl on the kitchen worktop. ‘Piss off.’

Left in the flat by himself, James could have (and probably should have) found himself something interesting to do. He could have practised his Hindi (sorry, mum), could have started updating a few of the lesson plans he’d made notes on that past autumn (sorry, future students), but, in the end, he decided he was going to lay on the sofa with a container of Chinese takeaway balanced on his stomach and watch _Gavin and Stacey_.

… again.

It didn’t make for the most exciting evening, sure, but as far as James was concerned, the whole point of winter hols was to sleep and dredge back some of the remaining bits of his sanity that disappeared in a flurry of stress during the school term. And if that meant that he was in bed by nine, well then at least Sirius wasn’t home to take the piss out of him about it.

It wasn’t all boring, though, because James woke up, completely disorientated, at some god awful time in the middle of the night to someone really going to _town_ pounding on his door. 

He should probably have shot out of bed, should probably have felt, you know, some alarm, but he just groped around on his bedside table for his glasses before sliding out of bed and shuffling down the hall to the front door. 

He didn’t mean to _immediately_ jump to conclusions and start blaming Sirius, but he’d been in this position approximately seventy-three times before because, god love him, Sirius was literally the worst person on earth when it came to remembering to take his keys.

James was halfway to cursing Sirius’ name when he opened the door to find Lily standing there and he was knocked back on his arse for the second time that evening. 

She was still wearing her dress from earlier and her hair was still pulled back, though there was a distinctly disheveled look about her now. Her hair was looser, a few more waves hanging freely around her face and at the base of her neck, her eye makeup was a little smudged, her cheeks were flushed more than they would be from just, you know, _blush_ , and, looking down, James saw that her feet were bare.

‘Hi. Sorry.’ Her eyes were glistening with what, at first, James thought was drink, but, in the dim light in the corridor, James could see tracks of tears down her cheeks. He almost felt bad for assuming she was pissed, but then he caught the smell of her breath. 

He loved mulled wine as much as the next person, but he was pretty sure that Lily was at least sixty percent booze at this point.

It was probably a good thing, actually, that she’d kicked her heels off before braving the stairs.

Lily sniffed and reached up so that she could wipe the old tears off her face. ‘Can I come in?’

‘God, of course.’ Despite having been completely passed out only thirty seconds before, James felt like every nerve in his body was standing on end now. He practically threw himself aside and gestured for Lily to come through. ‘Are you okay?’

A stupid question when she’d obviously been crying. 

She laughed and shrugged, but the sound was sad, heartbroken, and the gesture was loose in that way that indicated defeat. ‘I’m sure I’ll be alright if you have any of that vodka left.’

James eyed her carefully as he shut the door. He had a moment of mild panic where he couldn’t figure out whether or not he should lock the door (would she think he was going to murder her if he did up the bolt and the latch??) but he finally just made himself walk away. 

‘Did you drink all yours already?’ Also probably not the nicest thing to say given the circumstances, but —

She laughed, the sound a little wet in her throat. ‘I finished it tonight, yeah.’

‘All the mulled wine, too, from the smell of things.’ And, yes, she definitely had that sharply sweet smell of alcohol about her, but he’d be lying if he said that the warm cinnamon and barely there, bright citrus didn’t make her smell like, well, the best thing in the world.

At the very least, the best thing in his flat.

She laughed again and reached over to shove him, the gesture a little loose. ‘Piss off, I’m depressed.’

‘Why are you depressed?’

Lily didn’t say anything for a moment, just walked over into the lounge and dropped heavily onto the sofa. She sat there for a moment looking silently down at her knees, and James exhaled softly before he walked over to join her.

‘My sister’s a bitch,’ Lily said as James settled himself next to her. He was tired, he could feel the tug of his eyelids downwards, the desperation in his body just _begging_ him to drop his head back onto the cushions, but he was sitting here with her now and he could tell, no matter how brave she was trying to seem, that she needed him to be alert just then. 

‘Oh?’

She nodded loosely and turned on the sofa so that she could throw her legs over his. He’d thought that she’d just come over from next door, but her legs were freezing cold as they settled over him and he shivered involuntarily. If she noticed, it only served to make her double down and snuggle closer to him.

‘I literally had to call an Uber to pick me up from fucking _Surrey_ because she’s just — ugh.’ Lily kicked her feet a little in frustration and James’ hand moved over to her shin, his thumb moving hesitantly over her skin. 

‘That can’t’ve been cheap.’

She scowled. ‘It fucking wasn’t. But I was not going to keep sitting there and just _taking it_ you know?’

James didn’t know — he had no idea what she was talking about if he was being very honest — but she was irate and, honestly, anything that made Lily irate was enough to also make James irate.

Pathetic? Probably, but Lily wasn’t the type to do something drastic (like pay at least seventy-five quid for an Uber) just for some small slight.

‘What happened?’

‘She just —’ Lily huffed and, in one swift and slightly wobbly motion, she spun her legs off James’ lap, her feet landing heavily on the floor. She dropped her elbows immediately onto her thighs and dropped her head into her hands. 

‘She does this every time we’re together,’ Lily said, her voice muffled against her palms, ‘so I should expect it, but I’m a fucking idiot, I guess,’ she shrugged, her head momentarily lifting off her palms so James could see the tops of her bright red cheeks, ‘but I keep thinking that the years will make her realise that she’d just being an arsehole but, no, she’s still the same arsehole she was when we were kids.’

She still hadn’t really told him anything — anything about what had happened today that put her into this state — but James could tell that all of this, what she’s spewing out now, was necessary background information to whatever it was that had happened tonight. That this thing that sent her flying back from Surrey and barrelling into a bottle of Sirius’ homemade vodka was less about the actual slight and more about the history behind it. That it was more about how today had added one more straw to the haystack.

Whether or not it had broken Lily, James thought it remained to be seen, but he didn’t think it was, you know, a _good_ sign that she’d come home, chugged all the alcohol she could find, and then come to bang on his door.

James frowned. ‘Was she rude to you?’

He didn’t know how much he’d get her to explain tonight — didn’t even know if he should be getting her to open up and explain when she was clearly off her face.

‘Yeah.’ Lily shifted her forehead against her hands, like she was massaging the heels of her palms against her skin. She sat still for a moment, just rubbing her head, before she shot up like a rocket and started rambling on. ‘And, like I said, she’s literally _always_ been a twat, like thinks she’s better than me because she’s married, like she didn’t marry a fucking _Tory_ , and like I’m scum and stupid and a child and I don’t know why she even invited me tonight, James.’ 

The steam had steadily fallen out of her as she talked and she was looking at him now, shoulders slumped, with a heartbroken look on her face. Her eyes were shining with tears again and her lower lip was sticking out a little bit, and James felt like the foundation had crumbled in his chest.

He moved his hand, slowly, tentatively, and, with trembling fingers, rested his hand on her forearm.

‘Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.’

‘Of course it wasn’t.’ Lily sniffed and, with her free hand, reached up to swipe angrily at her cheeks. She looked like she was trying to drop back into herself, pull herself back together, but she couldn’t quite get a hold on the pieces. ‘But she shouldn’t have invited me if she was going to do that. She made me look like an _idiot_ and I had to pay a hundred quid for a fucking Uber and I’m so _angry_. She shouldn’t have fucking done that!’

Nevermind that James didn’t know the details.

‘You’re right.’ He squeezed her arm before sliding his hand back down onto the cushion between them. ‘You didn’t deserve that.’

‘I didn’t.’ Lily’s eyes hardened and she straightened a bit before something seemed to snap inside her and she started frantically patting her sides. ‘I should text her. Tell her what an absolute knobhead she is.’

‘No, Evans, you shouldn’t do that tonight,’ James said swiftly. Arsehole sister or not, Lily would definitely (or, well, at least probably) regret it if she sent her some scathing, typo-ridden message tonight. 

‘I don’t have my phone anyway.’ Lily sighed angrily and fell back into the sofa cushions. Her legs were splayed out in front of her, her knees pressed together, her ankles kicked wide, and her eyes fell closed as her head sank back into the back of the sofa. 

James thought it would only be for a moment, maybe two, but as the seconds dragged and Lily showed no sign of opening her eyes, he started to think that, finally, the events of the evening had caught up with her.

‘Hey.’ He nudged her forearm softly with the back of his hand. ‘Why don’t we get you home, eh?’

Lily groaned and shook her head, her eyes still closed. ‘Marlene has her girlfriend over. I love her, but I don’t want to hear them moaning all night.’

James felt a mild flash of irritation. ‘She kicked you out so she could hook up with her girlfriend?’

‘No, no.’ Lily reached out unseeingly and patted her hand clumsily against his thigh. ‘I snuck out. She didn’t even know I was home when she got there, but trust me,’ she opened her eyes then and turned her head so that she could meet James’ gaze, ‘I don’t think she would have noticed me even if I’d been standing naked in the lounge when she and Dorcas came stumbling in.’

James breathed a soft laugh. He certainly knew what that was like well enough.

‘Okay. So you’ll get my bed, then.’

‘No! I can’t steal your bed!’ Lily’s expression was almost comical, the way her mouth fell open, her eyes wide. She reached out and put her hand on his thigh again, this time gripping it underneath her hand like she was trying to press the imprint of her palm into his skin.

James made a quick mental note of the fact that Lily was one of those freakishly Herculean drunks.

‘It’s not stealing if I’m offering,’ James said simply. He pushed himself to his feet before he reached out for her hand. She just sat there staring at it, her eyes a little crossed because she refused to pick her head up off the back of the couch, before James laughed and little and shook his hand. ‘Come on. I insist.’

Lily huffed, a little cross, but she swung her hand out and slapped her palm into his. James pulled her to her feet, ignoring the rush in his chest as she stumbled into him. He let go of her hand and stepped back, eyes on hers to make sure that she followed him. She took a slow, tentative step around the coffee table and followed him out of the lounge towards the bedrooms.

Neither of them spoke as they walked down the short corridor, and even though James knew, _knew_ , that absolutely nothing was happening here, his heart was still hammering a violent tattoo inside his chest as he pushed open his bedroom door. It occurred to him that this was the first time Lily would be seeing the inside of his bedroom, and even though he highly doubted she would remember any of it, there was something about it that still felt significant to him.

He found himself wishing that this had happened under different circumstances. 

‘Here,’ he stepped over to his chest of drawers and nudged the bottom drawer open with his foot. He pulled a pair of joggers out of the bottom drawer and then one of his t-shirts out of the middle drawer before he turned and held them out to her. ‘You can sleep in these. They’ll be a bit big, but they should fit alright.’

Lily accepted them, her hands cradling around them like he was handing her something made of glass rather than one of his old uni t-shirts and a pair of worn in joggers.

‘Thanks.’ Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper, and James drew in a breath at the sound. 

‘If you need anything, the bathroom’s there.’ He pointed out the door to the door just to the right. ‘I’ll, uh, get you a glass of water and some paracetamol while you change.’

He turned a little awkwardly and stepped out of his bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him. He made his way down the corridor, mind racing but unable to land on anything in particular. It was a combination of things — the fact that it was two in the morning, the fact that Lily was currently in the process of tugging on his clothes, the fact that his place was the first one she’d thought to come when she needed someone. And sure, that was probably more because of the fact that she was completely sloshed and his flat was just, you know, upstairs, but still, it felt good, that she felt like he was someone she could run to.

That he was someone she felt safe with.

Not that, christ, he’d wanted her to have to find someone she felt safe with, because now it sounded like he was thankful that she’d had a completely shit evening.

He was just reaching up into the kitchen cabinet to grab their handy bottle of paracetamol when he heard his bedroom door creak open followed by the soft sound of the bathroom door closing. He heard the tap switch on from behind the closed door — the walls in this flat were paper thin and, this late at night, when everything was silent, you could hear _everything_ — but James did his best to switch his hearing off so that he could give her a modicum of privacy.

He took his time pouring her a glass of water and, after a bit more useless shuffling around in the kitchen, he finally heard the bathroom door open again. James took another deep breath before he picked the paracetamol tablets off the worktop — he’d figured letting them sit in his sweaty palms was probably not the best move — and made his way slowly down the corridor.

Lily had left his bedroom door open, but, as he approached, he saw that she was sitting there, head hung, eyes closed. He’d been right, his clothes were a bit big on her — his shirt was billowing out a little at the sides and his joggers were bunched up quite a bit at the ankles — but even still, his heart ached at the sight of her in them. Almost more so than it had earlier when she’d stood, prim and polished, on his doorstep in that dress.

Alright, definitely more so.

He tried to slow his steps, as though speed played any factor in how much the floorboards creaked under his feet, but Lily looked up at him the moment he stepped on that cursed board a foot away from his door.

Her face was all red, but he thought that it was less likely from crying and more from the fact that she’d obviously scrubbed all her makeup off in the bathroom. She’d plaited her hair, but there were still a few soft curls hanging down alongside her face.

And god, James wanted to run his fingers through them.

‘Here.’ He stepped forward, hand outstretched, paracetamol resting in his palm.

Lily reached out and lifted the tablets from his hand before accepting the water. ‘Thank you.’ 

She tossed both tablets into her mouth and took a long, slow sip of water to wash them down. By the time she’d finished drinking, she’d drank nearly the entire glass. 

She set the glass clumsily on James’ bedside table before she swung her legs up onto the mattress and, after a bit of fumbling with James’ twisted up duvet, slid underneath the blankets. James wasn’t sure what to do as Lily snuggled back into the pillows, if he should say something, do something, _what_ , so he just stood there, feet nailed to the floor, gaze shifting from her face, to what he was pretty sure were her knees under the duvet, to the end posts on his bed frame and then back again. Finally, after a long moment, Lily sighed and shifted underneath the blankets, turning onto her side so that she was facing him.

‘Thank you, James.’ Her voice was rough — her throat probably raw from all the alcohol and lack of sleep — but there was something warm about it, too, genuine, and so very Lily. And he couldn’t explain what it was, but the combination of her voice and her lying in his bed and all the things that had flown through his head since she’d shown up on his doorstep half an hour ago, but he felt, finally, like Sirius was probably right about this whole _telling her_ thing.

Not that he was going to tell her now, but like, soon. The first moment that an opportunity presented itself.

James smiled, a small, private, barely there thing, and the weight on his chest felt like it finally rolled off onto the floor.

‘Anytime, Evans.’

Lily made a small sound, something somewhere between a groan and a sigh, and snuggled deeper into his duvet. 

James stood there for a beat before he exhaled softly and crept back towards the door, careful to avoid the creaky floorboards. He pulled the door closed behind him, cringing as the hinges creaked, before he made his way back down the corridor towards the living room. 

James dropped down onto the sofa and dragged the blanket off the back. It wasn’t large enough to cover all of him — it was a colourful knitted blanket his mum had made him when he was small and James had never been able to get rid of it — but it was the only spare blanket he and Sirius had around the house. 

He thought vaguely of Lily’s flat, the way she had big fluffy blankets everywhere and wondered vaguely why he and Sirius were such animals in comparison. 

He snuggled down into the couch and draped the blanket over himself as best he could, though he was definitely sticking out by a few feet on both ends. He was a little too long to fit on the sofa fully stretched out, too, so he curled up a little, his knees not quite tucking up into his chest. 

Even this late at night, London wasn’t silent — he could hear, every now and again, the sound of a car driving down the road or someone drunkenly shouting outside the pub a few streets away — but there was still something special about the silence in his flat. Like even though the world very much still existed outside, here, in this grubby block of flats, things could still be peaceful. He closed his eyes, brow softening as he drew in a deep breath and, with one final thought that he should probably keep one ear open in case Lily needed him, James drifted off to sleep.

When James woke up the next morning, the soft grey morning light was shining across the living room and James’ legs were tied up so tightly in his blanket that he honestly didn’t think he could move them independently. 

He sat up, groaning softly, and, lifted himself up onto the back of the sofa, peering down the corridor towards his bedroom. 

The door was open.

And he’d definitely closed it last night.

He struggled underneath his blanket for a few minutes, just flopping his legs somewhat uselessly (and nearly choking on a laugh at the memory of him and Sirius getting stuck in those mermaid tales two summers ago), before he finally decided to just start unlooping the blanket from his legs. Once he was freed — and the blanket was, once again, relegated to the back of the sofa where it belonged — he stood and made his way swiftly down the corridor.

He came to a stop the moment his bedroom came into view. Like he was still a few feet away from the door and he literally shuddered to a stop.

His bed was made.

Lily was gone — he’d known she would be somehow, the moment he’d seen that his bedroom door was open — but, before she left, she’d gone and made his bloody bed, left him with hospital-neat corners and fluffed pillows that looked like she did that thing interior designers did where they chopped down the centre of the cushions to make them look perfectly lived in. There was a small square of paper resting in the centre of his duvet, too, but he’d get to that in a second — now, he was just too preoccupied (again) with the idea of Lily in his room.

Lily waking up here, the too-early morning sun creeping across her face, and deciding, as one of her first moves of the day, to move quietly around his room and make his bed for him. 

It almost broke his heart, thinking about her doing something like that. 

He drew in a soft breath and walked forward into his room, not stopping until he grabbed the sheet of paper off the duvet and dropped down onto his bed. It was just a piece of paper she’d torn off one of the notepads he had on his desk, but he found himself running his thumb almost reverently along the edge as he looked down at her handwriting, the small, neat, nearly cursive _James_ she’d written in the centre of the sheet.

After a beat, he swallowed and flipped open the note.

_Thank you for letting me stay here. I only remember bits and pieces of last night, so I can only imagine what I must have been like to deal with. I hope I wasn’t too annoying._

_I now officially owe you, please text me asap to collect because I LITERALLY cannot bear having this guilt hanging over my head any longer than 24hr. Thx_

_xx Lily_

_Ps. your bed really was ridiculously comfortable. I think I might be having more drunken breakdowns in future because that’s the best sleep I’ve had in years_

His smile spread slowly over his face as he read so that, by the time he reached the end, he was positively beaming down at the paper in his hands. He breathed a sharp laugh before, shaking his head, he got up to go grab his mobile off his chest of drawers where he’d left it charging the night before.

_Chat with: Lily Evans_

_James: you haev the neatest handwriting Ive ever seen_

_James: youre welcome to stay here anytime you need to no ‘owing me’ or drunken breakdowns necessary_

He stared down at his screen to confirm that the messages delivered (and then for another minute longer to see if Lily had read them yet). He was just getting ready to convince himself that he was being ridiculous and that he should do something useful (like scroll through Twitter instead) when the ticks under his messages turned blue and “Typing…” appeared underneath Lily’s name at the top of their chat window.

_Lily: thank you I blame my mother who was weirdly into penmanship when I was a kid_

_Lily: also don’t throw out something like that if you don’t mean it because I swear to god I will move into that bed if you let me_

Holy hell, he could _not_ breathe. 

He typed out one message, then another, before finally settling on something that was flirty (see: his promise to himself last night) but also just jokey enough that he could swerve back into casual friendly territory if necessary.

_James: you can’t just throw out something like THAT evans you might start getting my hopes up_

He drew the inside of his bottom lip between his teeth as he watched Lily type out her reply.

_Lily: oh yeah? and what exactly are you hoping for potter_

Was she….

Only way to find out was to throw himself off the cliff.

_James: dinner?_

This time, Lily’s reply came so quickly, James wasn’t even sure how she’d manage to type it.

_Lily: I thought you’d literally never ask_

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://elanev91.tumblr.com/)!


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